Wendy King (J.C. Rice)
WILD PITCHER: Rose Franco and her husband, former Mets pitcher John Franco, have been accused of threatening and attacking a woman handling their estate sale. (
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Meet the Franco-Steins.
Mets legend John Franco and his wife, Rose, assaulted and threatened a Westchester woman who handled their 2012 estate sale on Staten Island, a bombshell lawsuit alleges.
Wendy King claims in court papers that the four-time All-Star and former team captain shoved her, “glared at her in a menacing manner” and kept her trapped for 15 minutes as his wife screamed at her and accused her of theft.
“John Franco acted like a bully intending to intimidate a woman,” King, 61, says in her Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
At one point, Franco, 52 — who in his prime was capable of hurling a near-90 mph fastball — “took an autographed baseball and threw it at a wall in order to intimidate [King] and make her fear even more for her safety,” she alleges in court documents.
A lawyer for Franco vigorously batted down the claims.
“There’s absolutely no factual basis for any allegations of imprisonment, assault or anything like that,” said the attorney, Wayne Lonstein. “The Francos have done nothing wrong. There’s nobody more New York than John Franco. Having known him for over 20 years, never ever would I believe that to be true.”
King handled the sale of personal items — including video-arcade machines, pool tables, 19th-century oil paintings, furniture, sports equipment, silver and Mets memorabilia — from Franco’s six-bedroom Todt Hill mansion last year. Also sold was a Harley-Davidson that teammates gave the southpaw to mark his 400th save.
The motorcycle was sold for $7,000 and the entire sale netted $70,000 — chump change compared with the $44 million he earned over his 21-year career in the majors.
But when Rose Franco asked King “if she were happy with the sale,” King says in the suit that she replied “that the sale would have been better if Mrs. Franco had not interfered with the sale of numerous items, including a piano.”
“At that point, Rose Franco began yelling at the top of her lungs, accusing Wendy King of stealing and making rude offensive comments . . . calling her a thief and threatening to ruin her business,” the court papers say.
King tried to leave but “Franco shoved her away and stood in front of the door,” she charges.
The argument didn’t end there. King claims Rose Franco leveraged her husband’s celebrity status to get the Staten Island District Attorney’s Office to investigate King on the theft allegation. The DA’s Office, which didn’t file charges, declined to comment.
King did not call the police or otherwise report the incident, said her lawyer, who added that efforts to resolve the dispute peacefully have since struck out.
“It all could have blown over with a couple of apologies, but we didn’t get one. Instead they chose to get the DA involved,” said the lawyer, Jeffrey Gold.
Lonstein, Franco’s lawyer, claims King still owes the pitcher and his wife $30,000 from the estate sale, which had no security and was “like a three-ring circus.”
King sold items without permission and at prices the couple didn’t agree to and never gave the Francos an accounting, said Lonstein, who also accused King of failing to provide the Harley title to its buyer.
Gold, King’s lawyer, said that she denies selling things without the Francos’ OK and that she is also owed money.
These days, Franco, a Bensonhurst native, pitches for Municipal Credit Union as a spokesman.
In big-league baseball he pitched in 1,119 games and recorded 424 saves — the most for a left-handed pitcher and fourth most in major-league history. With 14 seasons with the Mets, Franco holds the franchise’s record with 276 saves.
Franco grew up a Mets fan, played for St. John’s University in Queens and often tells of how his dad, a city sanitation worker, encouraged his baseball dreams.
A father of three, Franco retired in 2005 and was inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame last year. He threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the inaugural game at Citi Field in 2009.
Franco and his wife held the estate sale after deciding to relocate to a downtown Manhattan apartment after their two older children left home.
Additional reporting by Jennifer Bain and Sabrina Ford